“Can you handle the success? Can you handle the love? That is the question I have for you…”

Denzel Washington stars in Spike Lee’s ode to Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” titled “Highest 2 Lowest.” The fifth film between Lee and Washington has the actor return to a kind of “American Gangster” character as a NYC-based music mogul who warns of the “money and mayhem” of stardom. A$AP Rocky stars as Yung Felon, the lead character in the reinterpretation of Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” about a cobbler who is extorted after his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.

While much of the plot for Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” remains under wraps, Lee teased that A$AP Rocky plays Washington’s onscreen son. “What’s funny is that I was looking at Instagram four or five years ago and people were saying...